“Six years later, it’s a whole different game, you know what I mean? And it’s interesting, too, because sometimes I think, ‘Damn, what if streaming existed back then?,’” Joey said. “I’d be in a whole different place, you know what I’m sayin'? Not that I don’t like where I’m at, but it’s just an interesting thing to think about, so I’m glad that I even got the opportunity to put it out on streaming platforms now and own it 100 percent.”

Joey also remembered the internal competition within Pro Era during its early years, led by the late Capital STEEZ. “We was constantly pushing each other, especially me, Steez, and CJ. At that time, we were literally coming to school each day ready to tear each other’s heads off,” he said. “Steez would come through, boom, kill us one day, so we like, ‘Next day, we gotta get this nigga. We gotta come back with the firest verse.’”

He also spoke about searching YouTube for beats to use on 1999. “[I’d look for a] MF Doom instrumental, and then that would take me down a rabbit hole,” Joey recalled. “It would bring me to Madlib, and then Madlib would bring me to J Dilla, and so on and so forth. J Dilla to Lord Finesse, and so on and so forth. That’s pretty much just how I found them. YouTube don’t get the cut that it deserves, because I feel like YouTube’s helped a lot of people, especially musicians.”